Hey everyone, this is a copy of an email I sent to is-wine customers. This is going to be a great night.

"In cooperation with Village Wine Imports, is-wine plays host to its first wine dinner of the 2002 season. We call it Burgundy Night and it takes place at Il Buco Restaurant, 47 Bond Street, between Lafayette and Bowery.

This will be a wonderful event, offering the opportunity to taste as well as to buy some fine Burgundy wines that are hard to get at retail."

Well, I was afraid you would ask. In general, the dinner was fine. Only two incidents when I felt the food and wine match failed, but it was because the food prep was mediocre at best. The crostini was overbearing--too much flavor for the wine, and the mushroom ravioli didn't quite make it to the wine's level.

A few of the reds were a little too New World for me--I like Burgundy when it tastes like Burgundy--especially the Volnay was a disappointment to me; none of the silky, subtleness that Volnay should be.

But the real failure was in the idea. is-wine, my shop, sponsored the dinner in the hope that we would sell some wine. The distributor/importer gave the wine free to the dinner and we subsidized the dinner. He and we lost a few hundred dollars, since the diners took advantage of the bargain, but only for the dinner and not for the reduced prices for the wines. I believe our mistake is that we teach our customers to seek value, and so they are hard-pressed to spend Burgundy dollars...

Sorry about the glitches in the dinner but think yopu nailed the problem on sales. Selling that group Burgandies would be like setting up a booth in Wendys to sell Kobe beef mail-order. WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img]

It probably would work with less expensive wines. At the recent dinner featuring Savannah-Chanelle Winery from California some people at my table purchased a case of the syrah, etc. I purchased three bottles of the pinot noir. Not sure how sales were at the other tables but it also gained name recognition for the winery which has recently been licensed to sell wines in North Carolina.
I have a Volnay "Caillerets" at home to try. I have yet to be disappointed by a Volnay so I'm sorry the one at the dinner didn't live up to reputation.

August! I can't even think beyond March. But if you do come into the city and you do not get in touch, I shall never speak to you again...I am sure Scoop and I can come up with something to delight you and your bride.

Hotwine, in general, the dinner was a fine evening--one of my regular customers even gave me a hug afterwards.

My business partner and I know what we did wrong and we shall make some fixes before we do another dinner. But we will do another, maybe one more interesting than Burgundy, you know, dandelion or rhubarb...

This is directed mostly to Foodie. I tried to e-mail him but it didn't go through. I really like Arlaud '99 Morey-St.-Denis Les Ruchots (a premier cru) and slightly behind that the Arlaud '99 Morey-St.-Denis Millandes (another premier cru). I also found Arlaud's '99 Clos-St.-Denis (grand cru) very appealing and better than the '98 of the same wine. I was surprised that Serena Sutcliffe in a book on Burgundy wines made rather a snotty or snobbish and dismissive comment about Arlaud wines. I know several distributors and retailers who are enthusiastic about this producer and go to extra pains to acquaint people with his wines because Morey-St.-Denis isn't as well known as its neighbors. (I actually prefer the Arlaud M-S-D wines to his Gevrey wines.) Foodie, do you have any experience with Arlaud's '99 wines? What is your opinion of them? I may not have enough experience with red burgundies (although I keep trying to increase it)to know if his wines are faithful to terroir or corrupted by modern anomalies. I do see distinctions between the "Les Ruchots", "Millandes" and Clos-St.-Denis. They don't all taste the same. Anyone else familiar with Arlaud wines want to give an opinion?

Last night I looked up what Clive Coates had to say about Arlaud wines. He said he has had some fine wines at the top of the line but some of the wines lower on the scale seemed slight. (Arlaud produces village wines as well as premier and grand cru wines). That makes me feel a little better about my attraction to the wines but doesn't really answer whether they are faithful to terroir. Mr. Coates also said Arlaud destems 90% of his grapes, and uses about 10% new wood. He sales some of the juice in bulk and bottles the rest. I think he said he spends 12 to 14 days vinifying and bottles after 18 months to two years.